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Sadie Anderson / Courtesy USA Rugby

Sadie Anderson file

• Age: 22 • College: Penn State • Fort Collins connection: Fort Collins native, home-schooled. Led Fort Collins Youth Rugby to high school state titles in 2005, 2006 and 2008 • Rugby honors: Rugby Magazine and USA Rugby 2012 Division I-All-American teams; Colorado High School Player of the Year in 2008.

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All it took was an email and a phone call and Sadie Anderson, the 5-foot-4 spark plug of a player, was on her way to Chula Vista, Calif., home of the USA women’s rugby team at the U.S. Olympic Training Center.

“It’s been a pretty crazy last few weeks,” said Anderson from her Fort Collins home last week. “Everything started coming together in December.”

Anderson, 22, a senior at Penn State and one of the premier up-and-coming rugby players in the country, is one of 16 American players contracted by USA women’s rugby to train at the Olympic Training Center under USA 7’s coach Ric Suggitt.

Anderson played 7’s, a variant of rugby featuring seven players instead of the standard 15, for the American team as a pool player in 2009 and 2010. She played under Suggitt in 2010, traveling to a tournament in Las Vegas, before returning to play the more traditional rugby 15’s at Penn State the last two years.

The quick, shifty Anderson caught the eye of Suggitt in Las Vegas and he told the Fort Collins native to contact him when she was ready to play 7’s full time for the American team.

“I had bugged her a little bit after Las Vegas, and she wasn’t interested then, and I told her when she was ready and she wanted to do it, we’d have a spot for her,” Suggitt said. “I called her, and immediately she started planning her classes for this semester and was trying to coordinate everything on how to get out here.

“One thing about her, you want that initiative and that drive. Sadie isn’t big by any means, but she’s self-motivated and has some good talent and a good brain.”

Suggitt helped coordinate housing for Anderson in a basement apartment with friends of his in Chula Vista, and Anderson frantically emailed her Penn State professors to enroll in her final three college courses, which she’ll take online. She graduates in May.

With all the legwork out of the way in a frantic three-week span, Anderson moved to California last week where it’s all rugby, all the time.

“They’re pretty jam-packed days,” said Suggitt, who formerly coached the Canada national team.

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Anderson’s days at the Olympic Training Center start with a team meeting in the morning. From there it’s to the gym for weights, exercises and sprinting form work. Lunch is with a nutritionist. Afternoons are spent on the field, working with the team and honing individual skills. Meetings with rugby team administrators are sprinkled in between before Anderson’s day ends at 5 p.m.

“It’s not very well paying. They don’t do it for the money,” Suggitt said. “That’s why I don’t bug them too much to come out here. I have to know they have that desire to play and train.”

Anderson started playing rugby when she was 14, after she became bored with club soccer.

Not afraid of contact after playing tackle football at home with her two younger brothers, she flirted with the opportunity to play kicker for the Rocky Mountain High School football team in 2004. She turned down the chance because she wanted more contact than what a kicker gets and instead opted to join the rugby team the following spring.

Rugby’s been her thing ever since.

She plays fly-half, like the quarterback of the team, where she uses her shifty, aggressive style to score points and direct traffic for her teammates.

In 7’s, with fewer players on the field, she has more room to operate and is even more dangerous in the open field, Suggitt said.

Anderson’s contract with the USA women’s team couldn’t come at a better time, as women’s 7’s rugby will make its Olympic debut in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Suggitt said 12 of the 16 players will be selected to travel with the team this summer to the World Cup in Moscow. Anderson will have to earn her way on the team.

“That has to be her goal, and I don’t doubt that she can earn it,” Suggitt said. “All these girls are talented, but she has that determination.”

Anderson said it’s wild to be playing at the highest level of USA women’s rugby.

“I remember after my first year of playing in high school I didn’t know how big it was. If it went all the way to the Olympics, I want to be there,” she said. “I’m going to do everything I can to make it happen.”